Beetlejuice cast: Where are they now - 35 YEARS after movie premiered trends now

When cult classic Beetlejuice hit movie theaters 35 years ago today, it instantly launched its cast to all-star status, helping to catapult the likes of Winona Ryder and Alec Baldwin to the upper echelons of fame. 

More than three decades after the spooky comedy was first released, both Winona and Alec - along with their co-stars Michael Keaton and Geena Davis - remain among some of the biggest names in Hollywood, having gone on to achieve a myriad of successes on the big and small screens. 

But their iconic roles in Tim Burton's 1988 phantom flick will, for some fans, remain their most memorable. 

For Michael, it was his portrayal of the grizzly and mischievous ghost Beetlejuice, who wreaks havoc on the new owners of the home that belonged to his fellow ghosts Barbara (Geena) and Adam (Alec). 

After Barbara and Alec perished in a car crash, they take on phantom form and watch on as a new couple - Charles (Jeffrey Jones) and Delia Deetz (Catherine O'Hara) move into their house with their teenage daughter, Lydia (Winona).

35 years on, the movie remains a cult classic - and rumors about a sequel have been swirling for years, ever since Ryder confirmed that a follow-up was in the works back in 2015. 

Since then, casting has been up in the air. Burton has expressed his desire for both Keaton and Ryder to return for the sequel. 

New names have since been thrown into the mix including Johnny Depp and Jenna Ortega, who would play Lydia's daughter. However, none of this has been officially confirmed.

Even though the sequel is still yet to get the green light, Beetlejuice has remained relevant over the past 35 years through the Broadway musical adaptation, Universal Studio's 2021 Halloween Horror Nights and its devoted fanbase.

It also helps that nearly the entire cast went on to have successful careers.

The majority of them star in some of Hollywood's biggest hits like Stranger Things, Schitt's Creek and more. 

Michael Keaton stepped away from Hollywood, but returned to win an Emmy and two Golden Globes 

Keaton, 71, starred as the one and only Beetlejuice. The role was one of the most notable of his career and he used its momentum to create a long-lasting career in Hollywood with iconic roles like Bruce Wayne in Batman and Riggan Thomson in Birdman, a role that he won a Golden Globe for.

The actor revealed that he played a huge role in shaping Beetlejuice, one of the quirkiest and most unique characters to ever hit the big screen.

At first, he didn't see himself in the part and initially turned down the role multiple times. 

'I liked Tim personally, but I really didn't know what he was trying to explain with the concept of the movie. And so I said no two or three times,' Keaton told EW.

However, once he was on board 'it was off to the races.' 

The 71-year-old explained that he personally approached the wardrobe and makeup department and told them: 'I want mold on my face. My hair has to look like I stuck my finger in an electric socket.'

He also had a role in picking the way Beetlejuice's teeth and skin looked while Burton selected the character's iconic suit.

Keaton appreciated that freedom in the creative process. 

'Beetlejuice is the ultimate "Yes and..." movie, really, because Tim never went, "Wait, no, you can't do that." He went, "Oh, you're going to do that? Cool. Then watch this. Then go over there and do this,"' he shared.

The veteran actor added: '[My character] isn't even in the movie very much! But it's 100 per cent just an original piece of art.' 

Shortly after Beetlejuice, he joined Burton on his next project, 1989's Batman.

Fans of the comic book saw it as a controversial choice, especially coming off of his campy portrayal of Beetlejuice.

However, he knew what it took to play a grounded version of the character by focusing on his alter ego, Bruce Wayne.

'I know the name of the movie is Batman and it's hugely iconic and very cool and culturally iconic,' he said on the "In The Envelope: The Actors Podcast.

'I always knew from the get-go it was Bruce Wayne. That was the secret... from a character perspective it's about Bruce Wayne. Who's that guy?'

During that time he was married to Caroline McWilliams. They shared one son together, Sean, who was born in 1983 - five years before the release of Beetlejuice.

They ultimately divorced in 1990 after eight years of marriage. 

Sadly, Williams passed away from complications of multiple myeloma - a cancer that comes from malignant plasma cells - in 2010.

Keaton had complicated feelings about his ex-wife's illness and death, which he described in a 2010 interview with Elle.

'And the feelings that came up were odd, but not in a bad way, necessarily, because we had remained close,' he stated. 

'She was a remarkable mom. Sean is the great guy he is because of her — we've always been tight, but now the bond's even tighter. We're the family now.' 

He then went on to date Friends star Courteney Cox in 1990 up until 1995. During that time, he returned for the Batman sequel, Batman Returns (1992). 

He spent the rest of the 90s taking on more film projects including The Paper (1994), Multiplicity (1996), Jackie Brown (1997) and Out Of Sight (1998).

During the 2000s, his career slowed down and he stuck to making cameos on TV series like The Simpsons and Frasier. 

Keaton has spoken out about the break in his career and explained that it was an active decision to step away from Hollywood for about a decade.

'Look, there's two different things here. There's me taking a pause. I really like life, doing things, having a normal life. So there was that,' he told The Guardian. 

'And there was me getting bored, hearing the sound of my voice, seeing the same old tricks. So I may have lost interest, combined with a whole lot of people not knocking on my door. It wasn't just me. 

'But I also consciously started to slowly change things internally, and it worked.... Just thinking about things, asking what you want, what you don't want, how am I going to get to there? And it takes a lot of stumbling around, and it takes discipline,' he explained.

With a newfound sense of discipline, he returned to Hollywood in 2008 in the film The Merry Gentleman. 

However, it wasn't until 2014 that he landed the biggest role of his career. 

Keaton was excited to accept a meeting with Birdman's director, stating: 'I had seen all of Alejandro Inarritu's movies and loved them.'

Once he read the script, he claimed he 'knew from the get-go I was doing that movie. I thought, "Boy, this is going to be really scary." But when I'm frightened, that's generally speaking a good sign.'

It certainly was a great omen for him as the film landed him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and the film went on to win an Oscar for Best Picture. 

The performance rebooted his career and he went on to star in Spotlight (2015) and  The Founder (2016).

Keaton landed his next award-winning role in the 2021 TV miniseries Dopesick. He won both an Emmy and Golden Globe for his performance as Dr. Samuel Finnix.

The role had a deep emotional impact on him and he even teared up when giving his Emmy acceptance speech, noting that he lost his nephew to drugs.

'Given the subject matter, this is for my nephew, Michael, and my sister, Pam,' he shared. 'I lost Michael to drugs and it hurts. To my sister Pam, thanks.' 

Most recently, Keaton has confirmed that he will be putting on the Batman helmet once again in The Flash after walking away from the role decades ago.

'I thought, "Boy, what would that be like?"... It has to be good,' he told THR of his prerequisites for taking on the role. 

'There's no reason to do it if it's not good. It's not gonna really change anything.'

He added: 'And I just jumped in and had fun. And why would you not? You know, I mean, director Andy Muschietti is fantastic, and it's really creative. I don't know. It's fun.'

He is also winning on the romance front as he has been dating Marni Turner for reportedly more than six years.

Unlike her famous beau, Turner has remained out of the spotlight. She has been a supportive figure in his life and even accompanied him to the Emmys in 2022.

Keaton has proved that he's not opposed to reprising old roles and he has said the same in regards to a Beetlejuice sequel.

'I've emailed Tim a couple of times, talked to the writer a couple of times, but all really, really preliminary stuff,' he told MTV.

'I always said that's the one thing I'd like to do again, if I ever did anything again. But it kind of required Tim to be involved some way or another.'

The feeling is reportedly mutual. Burton spoke with IGN about how a sequel only felt right if Keaton was involved. 

He said: 'There's only one Beetlejuice, and that's Michael. There is a script, and I would love to work with him again. I think there is now a better chance than ever.

'I miss that character. There's something that's cathartic and amazing about it. I think it's closer than ever.'

And he insisted that the story would have to be perfect, explaining: 'I have talked to Michael and I have talked to Winona, I've talked to a few people.

'It's something that I really would like to do in the right circumstances, but it's one of those films where it has to be right. It's not a kind of a movie that cries out [for a sequel], it's not the Beetlejuice trilogy,' he pointed out.

'So it's something that if the elements are right - because I do love the character and Michael's amazing as that character, so yeah we'll see. But there's nothing concrete yet.'

Winona Ryder struggled with Johnny Depp split and shoplifting arrest - but returned to Hollywood triumphantly with Stranger Things

Ryder, 51, got her big break in Beetlejuice and her career flourished in the 1990s.

After a dramatic breakup with Johnny Depp and a shoplifting incident in the 2000s, she had a recent resurgence due to her role of Joyce Byers in Stranger Things. 

Ryder starred as Lydia Deetz when she was just 16 years old. 

She has expressed in numerous interviews that she wasn't one of the popular kids in school and unfortunately, matters only got worse for her after Beetlejuice. 

'I remember thinking, "Ooh, it's, like, the number-one movie. This is going to make things great at school,"' she told Marie Claire UK. 

'But it made things worse. They called me a witch.'

After Beetlejuice, she starred in the cult classic Heathers (1988) and played Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin child bride Myra in Great Balls Of Fire (1989). 

Even after having four films under her belt and dating the likes of Rob Lowe in the mid-80s and Christian Slater around the time she filmed Heathers, she still wasn't widely accepted among her peers.

'When I get around people my own age, I'm a wreck. What they think of me is so much more important than what people in the industry think of me,' she told Vogue back in 1994.

'I think it's just facing my own insecurity. I was not accepted in high school, not in junior high school, not in elementary school. I was always picked on. I never had friends, except for one, Heather. 

'This is going to sound weird, but even after I got famous, kids weren't nicer to me. I mean I stayed in high school until I was a sophomore. I'd done four movies. I'd done Beetlejuice – it was a huge movie. But kids still threw food at me,' she concluded.

At that point, she left high school and started working on high-profile films with Hollywood's elite.

Burton welcomed her back for Edward Scissorhands where she met Depp. The two played love interests and would take their relationship off of the big screen into real life in 1989. Ryder was only 17 years old at the time while Depp was 27.

'What we have... Nothing I say will really be right,' she said of her and Depp's relationship to Interview Magazine in 1990.

She added: 'I will say that he's an amazing human whom I have an enormous amount of respect for and very deep feelings for. It's not a possessive, weird little Hollywood promenade.' 

He proposed to her just five months after they had started dating. While many thought they were moving too fast, Ryder wanted to assure people at the time that they were moving at their own pace. 

'I'm not getting married. It's nice that people worry about me, but they don't know me and they don't know what we have. And it's not what they've said it has been,' she shared.

'It's a friendship. It's a relationship, but we're not married, and we're not getting married. We're just hanging out. We both have our own lives,' she added. 

Ryder's career was taking off in 1990. Not only was she in Edward Scissorhands with her partner, but she had also starred in Mermaids and had accepted a role in The Godfather Part III. 

Struggling with the balance of working on three films in succession, Ryder had to drop out of The Godfather Part III. 

'It taught me that I have to slow down,' she said of the experience to Interview Magazine. 

She caught a respiratory infection from filming Mermaids in Boston and wearing tiny dresses. The day after Mermaids wrapped, she hopped a plane to Rome for The Godfather Part III. 

'I never should have flown. The doctor said I could have gone deaf,' she admitted. 

'Of course, that's not the way everybody made it sound. They made it sound like I freaked out and ran,' she added.  

She continued: 'I regret screwing people up, but I would have been a wet noodle. My acting probably would have been panned. How do you act when you don't have anything left? One thing you have to have when you act is energy.'

So she flew back to her hometown in San Francisco, claiming she was most looking forward to tasting her mom's soup and being in her own bed. 

Many feared that Ryder was pulling the plug on her own career. 

'This business is brutal,' she told Harper’s Bazaar, reflecting on the issue, in 2022.

'You're working constantly, but if you want to take a break, they tell you, "If you slow down, it's going to stop."'

She continued: 'And then it did slow down. So then you're hearing, "It's going to be impossible to come back." And then that changes to "you're not even part of the conversation." Like, it was brutal.'

However, she would surge into the spotlight again with her role in 1992's Dracula. 

Ryder has opened up about how difficult filming with director Francis Ford Coppola was.

Coppola sometimes had cruel methods for goading Ryder into the performance he wanted. 

'At the time, I thought, "Oh, I'm a real actress." But in retrospect I probably wouldn't take that again unless it was a director that I knew really well and that I really trusted,' Ryder admitted. 

She added: 'I learnt a lot on that set about what I'm not capable of tolerating.'

Ryder may have felt obligated to put up with inappropriate behavior on set because of her breakdown and disappearance from Hollywood.  

She hit another low when she

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